Separating a flawed messenger from a beneficial message can be tough. Particularly when the messenger is Edward Snowden, who leaked classified documents about secret government surveillance programs, then skipped the country.

On Thursday, after a 39-day layover at the Moscow airport, Snowden accepted one-year asylum in Russia, where President Vladimir Putin rejected U.S. requests to send him home. This wasn't surprising; if a Russian carrying secrets showed up at Reagan National in Washington, the U.S. government wouldn't be in any big hurry to ship him back. Even so, Putin's embarrassing snub produced predictable if overheated calls on Capitol Hill for President Obama to restart the Cold War.

Snowden, if he cared about his reputation and place in history, would be better off facing the music at home, rather than taking refuge with an increasingly authoritarian adversary of the United States.

Nevertheless, none of the leaker's antics diminishes the importance of the debate he started about government spying on Americans or the healthy turn that debate has taken.

When the National Security Agency's surveillance programs were disclosed in June, much of the public shrugged, and many lawmakers put up an unquestioning wall of support. That wall is now cracking.

Last week, the program to sweep up millions of Americans' phone records narrowly survived a bipartisan move in the House to kill it. On Wednesday, senators from both parties battered intelligence officials with tough questions. On Thursday, President Obama was concerned enough to call congressional leaders to a White House meeting to discuss the programs. And, in a bizarre turn, NSA Director Keith Alexander appeared in Las Vegas to woo a convention of cybersecurity experts, including hackers, who tend to be civil libertarians. It didn't go well; some in the audience heckled him.

Worried that it can't find terrorist needles in a worldwide haystack, the NSA seems bent on collecting the whole haystack so it can hunt down needles when it gets a tip. Trouble is, the bulk of the hay is people suspected of absolutely nothing — and such data gathering, even with good intentions, inevitably leads to abuse.

Now that lawmakers are finally paying proper attention, here's what should happen:

The massive collection of phone "metadata" — numbers called, time and duration of calls — needs to be, at the very least, reined in. Currently, by the time an analyst completes a single query, the calls of more than a million Americans could be involved. That information is placed in a "corporate store," where it can be queried with even fewer restrictions. Even the program's staunchest supporters are advocating changes.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves warrants, needs to hear and reflect a broader range of views. The court was meant to serve as a bulwark against unconstitutional intrusions, not act as a sort of parallel Supreme Court that issues long, secret rulings.

Lawmakers with oversight authority need more information about a panoply of other murky programs. On Wednesday, London's Guardian — via another Snowden leak — disclosed an NSA search tool, XKeyscore, to let analysts search databases of "e-mails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals." Is anything beyond the NSA's prying eyes?

Snowden, who set off this debate, is in many ways now a sideshow. As he starts his new life in Russia, addressing the issues he revealed is the main event.

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